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“DESCRIBES THE CONSTRUCTION ALONG A 3,000 MILE LINE OF A SERIES OF RADAR SITES IN NORTHERN CANADA AND ALASKA, ILLUSTRATING THE EFFECTIVE COOPERATION BETWEEN PRIVATE INDUSTRY AND THE GOVERNMENTS OF BOTH COUNTRIES.”
Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
Reupload of a previously uploaded film, in one piece instead of multiple parts, and with improved video & sound.
The Distant Early Warning Line, also known as the DEW Line or Early Warning Line, was a system of radar stations in the far northern Arctic region of Canada, with additional stations along the North Coast and Aleutian Islands of Alaska, in addition to the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It was set up to detect incoming Soviet bombers during the Cold War, and provide early warning of a land based invasion.
The DEW Line was the northernmost and most capable of three radar lines in Canada; the joint Canadian-US Pinetree Line ran from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, and the Mid-Canada Line ran somewhat north of this.
Introduction
The DEW Line was a significant achievement among Cold War initiatives in the Arctic. A successful combination of scientific design and logistical planning of the late 1950s, the DEW Line consisted of a string of continental defence radar installations, ultimately stretching from Alaska to Greenland. In addition to the secondary Mid-Canada Line and the tertiary Pinetree Line, the DEW Line marked the edge of an electronic grid controlled by the new SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment) computer system and was ultimately centred on the Colorado command hub of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
The construction of the DEW Line was made possible by bilateral agreement between the Canadian and American governments and by an alliance between the U.S. Department of Defense and the Bell system of communication companies. It grew out of a detailed study made by a group of the nation’s foremost scientists in 1952, the Summer Study Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The subject of the study was the vulnerability of the U.S. and Canada to air attack, and its concluding recommendation was that a distant early warning line of search radar stations be built across the Arctic border of the North American continent as rapidly as possible.
Improvements in Soviet technology rendered the Pinetree Line and Mid-Canada Line inadequate to provide enough early warning and on February 15, 1954, the Canadian and American governments agreed to jointly build a third line of radar stations (Distant Early Warning), this time running across the high Arctic. The line would run roughly along the 69th parallel north, 200 miles or 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.
Before the job was completed, men with the necessary knowledge, skills and experience were drawn from Bell telephone companies in every state in the U.S. Much of the responsibility was delegated under close supervision to a vast number of subcontractors, suppliers, and U.S. military units…
All of the installations flew both Canadian and United States flags until they were inactivated as DEW sites, and jurisdiction was transferred to the Canadian Government as part of the North Warning System in the late 1980s and early 1990s…
Radar system
In Point Lay, Alaska, the main AN/FPS-19 search radar is in the dome, flanked by two AN/FRC-45 lateral communications dishes (or AN/FRC-102, depending on the date). To the left are the much larger southbound AN/FRC-101 communications dishes. Not visible is the AN/FPS-23 “gap filler” Doppler antenna.
The DEW Line was upgraded with fifteen new AN/FPS-117 phased-array radars between 1985 and 1994, and renamed the North Warning System…
The DEW line was supplemented by two “barrier” forces in the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans which were operated by the United States Navy from 1956 to 1965. These barrier forces consisted of surface picket stations, dubbed “Texas Towers”, each supported by radar destroyer escorts, and an air wing of Lockheed WV-2 Warning Star aircraft that patrolled the picket lines at 1,000-2,000 m (3,000-6,000 ft) altitude in 12- to 14-hour missions. Their objective was to extend early warning coverage against surprise Soviet bomber and missile attack as an extension of the DEW Line…
